The Police: Protectors and Predators
Fred Foldvary

Editorial

The Police: Protectors and Predators

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor

The fairy-tale story of government tells children that the purpose of government is to protect people’s rights to life, liberty, and property, and to provide needed social services which folks otherwise would not have. Many adults grow up believing this fable long after they have stopped believing in Santa Claus.

The reality is that government is much more of a predator than a protector. Many more people have been murdered by governments in wars and mass slaughters than by non-government killers. Much more property has been destroyed, confiscated, and otherwise stolen by government, whether as taxes or as forfeiture, than by outlaws.

A recent example of murder by the police was reported in the Los Angeles Times on August 28, 1999. The article, “No Drug Link to Family in Fatal Raid, Police Say” by Anne-Marie O’Connor states that Mario Paz, a 65-year-old man, was fatally shot in the back, in full view of his wife, by an El Monte officer during a search of his home on August 9. There is no evidence that Paz or anyone in his family was involved in drug trafficking.

The Paz house is in the city of Compton, but the El Monte police commonly get search warrants to enter homes in other cities as part of their aggressive anti-drug strategy when it is related to drug activity in El Monte. This shows how even if the police in your own town are not predators, the police of other towns who are more aggressive can invade your house to kill you and steal your goods.

A SWAT team of up to 20 officers shot the front and back doors open as the family slept. El Monte police had asked for a warrant to search the Paz home after some mail bearing the family’s address was found among a the possessions of a drug suspect who lived next door during the 1980s. The neighbor had asked Paz to receive his mail at the Paz home.

The police found three pistols and a rifle in the house, which were seized as evidence, since the officer claimed that Paz had reached for a gun, a claim denied by the family. The family said Mario Paz kept firearms safely stored away in a dresser drawer to protect the family in the high-crime neighborhood.

The report states that “El Monte police also seized $10,000 in cash at the Paz home, which the sheriff’s investigators say was taken as evidence… The family has described the money as their life savings.” Since the police typically get to keep the loot they confiscate using civil asset forfeiture and don’t have to account for it, it provides a powerful motive for predation. They also have a motive in murdering the owner, since that destroys a witness and prevents him from trying to get back his property.

So there we have a documented example of the police acting as predators, committing murder and theft. Waco is a prime example of an attack by the federal police, now being investigated again. But even if folks realize that the police are often predators, most would be reluctant to eliminate the police, since they want to have their services as protectors. The policemen’s role as protectors helps them keep their role as predators.

One way to eliminate this dangerous dual role of the police would be to split the police into two separate organizations. A town or city could create an entirely new Department of Protection. Its officers would wear uniforms recognizably different from that of the police, and their charter would confine them to only act to protect life and property. They would be prohibited from using civil asset forfeiture or otherwise confiscating property other than weapons that are a present danger. The traffic police would belong to the predatory force, since too often, high traffic fines on unrealistic speed limits, and hidden traffic signs, serve as revenue sources rather than being there for safety.

With this separate Protection squad, someone could welcome the protective police into his home to report a robbery without fearing that the police would become even worse robbers, snooping around to look for cash or guns. The Department of Protection would be prohibited from enforcing crimes without victims, leaving that to the predatory police. The protective officers could even help protect people from the predatory police, or at least be witnesses to any killings or theft.

Splitting police departments into two separate groups, the predators and the protectors, would resolve the schizophrenic nature of the police today. The predatory police could eventually become independent of the government, since they could make their living entirely from confiscations and fines. Taxes would then support only the protective police.

There is probably something in human nature that wants us to be in an environment in which there is predation. Why else do we put up with predators who roam the highways randomly stopping motorists and inflicting penalties? If humans insist on having predators, at least we can put labels on them so we can tell them apart from the good officers who want to protect human life and property.

What is your opinion? Share it with The Progress Report!Copyright 1999 by Fred E. Foldvary. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, which includes but is not limited to facsimile transmission, photocopying, recording, rekeying, or using any information storage or retrieval system, without giving full credit to Fred Foldvary and The Progress Report.

We are Hanno Beck, Lindy Davies, Fred Foldvary, Mike O'Mara, Jeff Smith, and assorted volunteers, all dedicated to bringing you the news and views that make a difference in our species struggle to win justice, prosperity, and eco-librium.

One Response to The Police: Protectors and Predators
Fred Foldvary

I believe that our police forces are going way above and beyond their call for duty in this country. Let’s send these officers over to Iraq for a month, and see how they would look at the public then. Predatory police is a good term. They are not only protecting us from ourselves, but are making money for the states in which they serve… It is all about money, not me the public

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Arts & Letters

Geonomics is …

the study of the money we spend on the nature we use. When we pay that money to private owners, we reward both speculation and over-extraction. Robert Kiyosaki’s bestseller, Rich Dad’s Prophecy, says, “One of the reasons McDonald’s is such a rich company is not because it sells a lot of burgers but because it owns the land at some of the best intersections in the world. The main reason Kim and I invest in such properties is to own the land at the corner of the intersection. (p 200) My real estate advisor states that the rich either made their money in real estate or hold their money in real estate.” (p 141, via Greg Young) When government recovers the rents for natural advantages for everyone, it can save citizens millions. Ben Sevack, Montreal steel manufacturer, tells us (August 12) that Alberta, by leasing oil & gas fields, recovers enough revenue to be the only province in Canada to get by without a sales tax and to levy a flat provincial income tax. While running for re-election, provincial Premier Ralph Klein proposes to abolish their income tax and promises to eliminate medical insurance premiums and use resource revenue to pay for all medical expense for seniors. After all this planned tax-cutting and greater expense, they still expect a large budget surplus. Even places without oil and gas have high site values in their downtowns, and high values in their utility franchises. Recover the values of locations and privileges, displace the harmful taxes on sales, salaries, and structures, then use the revenue to fund basic government and pay residents a dividend, and you have geonomics in action.

the policy that the earth’s natural patterns suggests. Use the eco-system’s self-regulating feedback loops as a model. What then needs changing? Basically, the flow of money spent to own or use Earth (both sites and resources) must visit each of us. Our agent, government, exists to collect this natural rent via fees and to disburse the collected revenue via dividends. Doing this, we could forgo taxes on homes and earnings and subsidies of either the needy or the greedy. For more, see our web site, our pamphlet of the title above, or any of our other lit pieces; ask for our literature list.

a way to have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. Last summer’s expansive forest fires shed light on growing class resentment in the West. Old log-gers and ranchers rankled at the new urgency to stamp out the blazes that threatened the recent Aspenesque settlers. The newcomers expected working class firemen to make protecting their expensive homes top priority. (Chr Sci Mntr, Spt 7) The tinder for this envy? Rich people moving in bid up the price of land, making it hard to afford by people on the margin. The fault really lies with our system of privatizing land value. If this rising value were collected by land dues and shared by rent dividends – the essence of geonomic policy – who’d complain? The more people move in, the higher the land value, and the fatter the dividend paid to residents. Then people on the margin might go out of their way to invite rich outsiders in.

a way to redirect all the money we spend on the nature we use – trillions of dollars annually. We can’t pay the Creator of sites and resources and are mistaken to pay their owners this biggest stream in our economy. Instead, as owners we should pay our neighbors for respecting our claims to land. Owners could pay in land dues to the public treasury, a la Sydney Australia’s land tax, and residents could get back a “rent” dividend, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. We’d pay for owning sites, resources, EM spectrum, or emitting pollutants into the ecosphere, then get a fair share of the recovered revenue. The economy would finally have a thermostat, the dividend. When it’s small, people would work more; when it’s big, they’d work less. Sharing Earth’s worth, we could jettison counterproductive taxes and addictive subsidies. Prices would become precise; things like sprawl, sprayed food, gasoline engines, coal-burning plants would no longer seem cheap; things like compact towns, organic foods, fuel cells, and solar powers would become affordable. Getting shares, people could spend their expanded leisure socializing, making art, enjoying nature, or just chilling. Economies let us produce wealth efficiently; geonomics lets us share it fairly.

a discipline that, compared to economics, is as obscure as Warren Buffett’s investment strategy, compared to conventional investment theory, about which Buffett said, “You couldn’t advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat.” (The New York Times, Oct 29). The writer wondered, “But why? If it works, why don’t more investors use it?”
Good question. Geonomics works, too. Every place that has used it has prospered while conserving resources. Yet it remains off the radar of many wanna-be reformers. Gradually, tho’, that’s changing. More are becoming aware of what geonomics studies – all the money we spend on the nature we use. Geonomics (1) as an alternative worldview to the anthropocentric, sees human economies as part of the embracing ecosystem with natural feedback loops seeking balance in both systems. (2) As an alternative to worker vs. investor, it sees our need for sites and resources making those who own land into landlords. (3)As an alternative to economics, it tracks the trillions of “rent” as it drives the “housing” bubble and all other indicators. And (4) as an alternative to left or right, it suggests we not tax ourselves then subsidize our favorites but recover and share society’s surplus, paying in land dues and getting back “rent” dividends, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. Letting rent go to the wrong pockets wreaks havoc, while redirecting it to everyone would solve our economic ills and the ills downstream from them.
People must learn to stop whining so much and feel enough self-esteem to demand a fair share of rent, society’s surplus, the commonwealth.

as unfamiliar as geo-economics. The latter is a course some universities offer that combines geography and economics. A UN newsletter, Go Between (57, Apr/May ’96; thanks, Pat Aller), cited an Asian conference on geopolitics and “geoeconomics”. The abbreviated term ‘geonomics” is the name of an institute on Middlebury College campus and of a show on CNBC. Both entities use the neologism to mean “global economics”, in particular world trade. We use geonomics entirely differently, to refer to the money people spend on the nature they use, how letting this flow collect in a few pockets creates class and poverty and assaults upon the environment, and how, on the other hand, sharing this rental flow creates equality, prosperity, and a people/planet harmony. This flow of natural rent, several trillions dollars in the US each year, shapes society and belongs to society.

a new policy from a new perspective. Once your worldview shifts — so that vacant city lots are no longer invisible — then epiphany. “Of course! Why didn’t I see it before?” Once you do see the emptiness and what damage it does, how can you ever go back to the old paradigm?

not a panacea, but like John Muir said, “pull on any one thing, and find it connected to everything else.” Recall last month’s earthquake in El Salvador. We felt it and its formidable after-shocks in Nicaragua. Immediately afterwards, my host nation, one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, sent aid to its Central American neighbor. The Nica newspapers carried photos of the devastation. They showed that the cliff sides that crumbled had had homes built on them while the cliffs left pristine withstood the shock. Could monopoly of good, safe, flat land be pushing people to build on risky, unstable cliffs? If so, that’s just one more good reason to break up land monopoly. What works to break up land monopoly, history shows, is for society to collect the annual rental value of the underlying sites and resources. That’d spur owners to use level land efficiently, so no one would be excluded, forced to resort to cliffs. To prevent another man-induced landslide is yet another reason to spread geonomics.

a scientific look at how we divvy up the work and the wealth, how some of us end up with too much or too little effort or reward. That’s partly due to Ricardo’s Law of Rent, showing how wasteful use of Earth cuts wages. And it’s partly due to how a society’s elite runs government around like water boys, dishing out subsidies and tax breaks. While geonomists look political reality right in the eye, without blinking, conventional economists flinch. When Paul Volcker, ex-chief of the Federal Reserve, moved on to a cushy professorship at Princeton cum book contract, the crush of deadlines bore down. So Volcker asked a junior associate to help with the book. The guy refused, explaining that giving serious consideration to policy would ruin his academic career. The ex-Fed chief couldn’t believe it and asked the department chair if truly that were the case. That head honcho pondered the question then replied no, not if he only does it once. And economics was AKA political economy!

a way to connect the dots. Making the cyber rounds is “The Cavernous Divide” by Scott Klinger, from AlterNet (posted March 21): “As the number of billionaires in the world expands, so does the number of those in poverty.” Duh. The yawning income gap is not news. Nearly every issue of our quarterly digest carries a similar quote. Yet the connection was worked out long ago by one of America’s greatest thinkers, Henry George, who labeled his masterpiece, Progress and Poverty. Techno- and socio-advances always enrich few and impoverish many. Yet progress also pushes up location values – the geonomic insight (is Silicon Valley cheaper now or more expensive?). Instead of taxing income, sales, or buildings, society could collect those values of sites, resources, EM spectrum, and ecosystem services via fees and dues, which would lower the income ceiling, and instead of lavishing corporate welfare, pay out the recovered revenue via dividends, which would jack up the income floor. Dots connected.